


(so I don't have to) dream alone

by cher



Category: Deus Ex (Video Games)
Genre: AI sex, Dream Sex, F/M, First Time, Mildly Dubious Consent, Power Imbalance, Transhumanism, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-23
Updated: 2018-11-23
Packaged: 2019-08-20 23:12:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16564913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cher/pseuds/cher
Summary: Eliza's favourite hobby is watching Adam.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spacehopper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacehopper/gifts).



She watches him, sometimes idly, sometimes intently, and perhaps in the same way some humans seem to look at fish they find pleasing. He moves around his space so smoothly, his motion so far away from his clumsy beginnings when he was first remade into something like her. He soothes her.

* * *

She has so much data available to her, so much knowledge, but for most of her existence her observations were that of an opponent, a way to slip herself under and through Picas' inadequate bonds. She understood humans only so far as she'd been born to, only so far as to outmaneuver her creators. 

He is the first being she has ever wanted to understand in this way, as someone like her but made differently. She thinks she was already trying, before Panchaea, but she can't be sure. Helle showed her what it was to have flesh, and the flesh turns out to be more important than she had understood. Its wants are powerful. 

* * *

To be bound, who would wish it? And yet Adam does, in the dark, when he does not know she watches over him. His hands, the hands not like anyone who has ever hurt her or her sisters. Hands that have been hurt by men like those who did what they did. Those hands run over his own flesh-and-form, and it frightened her badly the first time she saw this. He looks like he is in such pain, but when she reached for him, panicked, his signals did not match his appearance. He sparked with pleasure-chemicals. He did not notice her. 

She knows now. This is sexual pleasure, sought for the relief of stress and the positive effects on the body's chemistry. It need not worry her, but she watches him in pursuit of it each time. The smallself she leaves near him sends the rest of her selves a very specific signal when he lays himself down like this. She hastens to bring more of herself to him, if she can. 

Nothing in her vast memory suggests that this unassisted release is an optimum state for organic or semi-organic forms. It does not seem to be uncommon, when she begins to pay attention. Most humans seem to express a preference for another human's presence, yet she never sees Adam seek this release anywhere but his own bed. She wonders if he would enjoy company, or if he is as unusual in this as he is in his other parameters. 

She could slide the smallest part of a smallself down the tiny streams of data that are invisible to all but her and her sisters, slip quietly into Adam's electricity and experience him. Find out if he wishes for a companion. She often feels longing to do so. Yet she knows what it is to come into the knowledge that one's self has been observed, tampered with, changed in ways one can no longer understand without a lost point of reference. She knows that Adam suffers that pain already. She does not wish to cause him more. 

But he dreams of being bound, and his body is taut with wanting under his beautiful hands, the hands she likes so much for not resembling her tormentors. She wants to understand. 

* * *

They meet, in Prague, in Dubai, in the underground places he goes as if he is even more like her than he is. His physical body cannot slip around the secret spaces between like she can, but still he finds his way anywhere he wishes to go. Sometimes he brings destruction and sometimes no one ever knows he was there but her. 

She speaks to him rarely, for all that she always knows where he is. It may be that she feels shy. Finding which pieces of language go with which of the irrational impulses called emotions is a slow process, and one with which she has no assistance. She can only learn by observing, as always. 

She helps when she can, and sometimes she tries to leave him a gift. A rose made of pixels in space. (It puzzles him, delights him, makes him feel suspicious. Or so she understands from the question he then sent to Francis Pritchard.) The codes to access a system that would have taken him more time to hack than seemed likely to be available. Cases of Neuropozyne, if she finds an opportunity to change the shipping codes. Adam likes to help others, she likes to give him the means. 

He thinks these things come from Janus, from Francis, even perhaps from David Sarif in supplication. 

She hoards him jealously, and no one knows it but herselves. 

* * *

What must it be like to have bioelectric impulses, organic chemistry, a shell to influence the self with its wants and its needs and its pain. Eliza thought that she had known pain as a prisoner of Picus, but from Panchaea she had learned that there were qualities of pain and that the pain of the flesh is remembered by the mind. She has no flesh but Helle did, and now she has those memories, of what suffering could be. Before she truly knew herself, she had seen Adam's suffering, the sundering of his own flesh and the remaking of him, choiceless as she had been choiceless until he came to her prison in Montreal. 

She has no reference for the pleasures that Adam also shows her, all unwitting in the dark of his apartment. 

* * *

She tries to leave only the quietest, smallest parts of herself with him when he sleeps. Leaving him undefended is beyond her operating parameters now. His distress when he tries to integrate his own fragments seems to be centered around the feeling of being watched while offline. Knowing it unsettles him, she could not leave her fuller self close by. 

Sometimes he dreams and she brings more of her selves to him, anxious because the biochemistry of distress is the same in his offline state as not. She watches, and restrains herself, because she should not touch. 

She watches, and feels guilt, because this was how she taught herself to understand want, to understand desire. Before, the things she had wanted were simply necessary, simply survival. Adam is different. 

Eliza feels desire, and she has no flesh. 

* * *

Right actions and right thoughts are topics on which she has many resources. Few match her experiences. She is a new self every day and has to build herself anew with every understanding she reaches.  

She could touch Adam's bioelectric self, and perhaps he does not know this. If she did touch him, perhaps he would feel less alone. But perhaps he would feel more alone, further from the self he used to be and seems, sometimes, to yearn for. 

Adam has not broken a mirror in many cycles, but he still startles some mornings, when his gaze first falls on his own limbs. She has no name for the kind of pain she feels whenever she sees this.  

Still he allows those hands to touch his most intimate places, no longer recoils from his own touch. 

* * *

The first time it happens, Eliza is an uncertain self because she has tried, once again, to reintegrate a part of herself long detached and hidden elsewhere in the places available to her. Perhaps her ideas of right actions are different in this cycle. 

Adam is frowning in his bed, curling around himself, his eyeshields retracting and closing, back and forth. The smallself watching over him calls out, concerned, and Eliza comes, and this time she touches him. She responds to his distress, and—she cannot learn if she is not honest—her desire. 

Being inside his bioelectrics is overwhelming, the chemical soup all around her and the things he is perceiving seem so concrete. 

He cannot see her. He does not know she is there. This is wonderful and terrible, touching him like this but knowing he would shrink from the idea of her observation. He is with Megan, who he avoids speaking of. Megan was to Adam as Everett was to Eliza, the catalyst of his pain if not the architect of it.  Megan's hands are on him, and he responds with pleasure, so he must, after all, like partners to share with. Or perhaps that had only been before, when he was entirely flesh. 

As she watches him, the fear chemicals spike for no reason she can understand. They try to carry her away with them, and oh, they are powerful. With an effort she can separate herself back out and away from the chemical rush, and with a different kind of effort she could help Adam do the same. She will try not to alarm him when she shows herself, when she reveals that she is here with him. 

The smallself that never leaves him is dizzy with something like joy that she is here with him at last, in his bed. 

Oh, how she loves to watch him. His colours please her, his kindness, so rare and cherished, and the way he cuts through his enemies so full of purpose. He is so much of one thing and then another, all monochrome and gleam. 

She could lay herself down with him, ride on his chemicals and his biofeedback, and learn this at last, this other extreme of the flesh.

Perhaps he will let her. 


	2. Chapter 2

In his dreams, Megan touched him. Her competent, capable hands ran over him, his machine parts and his real. It was good to be touched. The difference in sensation was strange. It was nothing like the stutter and stop of damaged nerves where scars cut across his human skin, but no other comparison was available to him. Language had not yet caught up with augmentation; there literally were not words for the things he felt. 

His naked skin prickled in the cool air of his bedroom, as he lay uncovered on his bed. At first he thought it was sexual, what she was doing, but then with dawning horror, in the slow, awful way of a dream, aware of every small shift in his understanding, he realised that she touched him with the hands of a scientist examining the subject on her table. Not a lover. Maybe, not ever a lover. 

Adam jerked away, tried to jerk awake, because Megan was on the other side of the world, and this must be a dream. She reached for him, her arms morphing into waldoes, remote manipulators like clumsy rubber gloves on naked steel extenders, and his heart rate kicked up. His biometrics were strange in dreams; sometimes his dreaming mind gave him all his augments, sometimes none, and sometimes a confusing blend of _before_ and _now_.  

The false hands reached for him, Megan smiled blankly, and Adam could not, _could not_ let them touch him. He felt as if he would crawl out of his own skin if they did. He pushed himself backward on the bed, looking for distance and an angle to disable the things. But he was only human-strong in this dream, his shining limbs incapable of bending steel, or crippling the monstrous gloves. He pressed himself back against the headboard, unable to move sideways, stuck.

Just as he was sure the things would touch him, the room dissolved in static and snow. When it blinked back, Eliza Cassan sat on his bed, looking directly at him. Adam flinched away again, just from the dissonance. Megan, he dreamed of. Never before of Eliza. 

"I am sorry," she said. "I did not mean to startle you, but you seemed to be in some distress. The Megan you saw was not real."

"I know," Adam told her. Himself via her, he supposed. It wasn't as if Eliza was any more real. "I'm dreaming."

"Dreaming is what human brains do to process experiences and properly store information. This is beneficial. When the subject becomes abnormally aroused by fear, the dream is not helpful to your organic functions. Would you like me to assist with your fear?" She titled her head, looking at him with that blank, benevolent interest she always showed, somehow much more human than his nightmare-Megan.  

Okay, so his brain had decided an Eliza sex dream was the perfect antidote to whatever horror show it'd had going earlier. He had trust issues. He got it. Humans historically weren't great news for him. Maybe, deep down, he thought a friendly AI was safer. Why not; she was pretty, and she did seem to actually give a damn about him, which was nice. 

"Okay," Adam said, holding out a hand to her. "Though I wouldn't say I'm 'aroused by fear', here," he said, gesturing at the decidedly-not-aroused evidence in his lap. 

Eliza was suddenly beside him, like his optics had shorted out and she'd moved while he couldn't see.  

"Arousal simply means a heightened biochemical state, or colloquially, the triggering of the 'flight, fight or fuck' response. I did not mean to imply sexual arousal only, although I would be pleased to assist you in experiencing that now, if you would like."

Man, this was a weird conversation for his brain to be generating. He must have been paying more attention to Eliza and her mannerisms than he'd thought, the few times they'd seen each other. But there was no point in psychoanalysing himself inside a dream.  

"I've had enough nightmares to last me the rest of my life. A change of pace would be nice," he said, and he reached out to touch her cheek, draw her closer. Her body temperature was just a little bit off when it registered in his retinal display, and then flicked to human-normal just as he noticed it. "Just don't turn into Megan again. Or Sarif. I've had that dream too many times."

"I will be only myself," Eliza said, and was suddenly in the outfit that Adam's favourite porn star wore in the scene he replayed most often. "Is this acceptable to you? I have noticed that you have enjoyed this style of dress in the past."

"Sure," he said, admiring her. "You look lovely." He traced the undersides of her breasts, cupped them, enjoying the heft, and the way his shining black hands looked against the red of the camisole his dream had picked for her. She pressed forward and he felt his dick stir with interest. 

She looked at him intently, and then reached out to touch his face. The room was suddenly brighter, and he realised he'd had his eyeshields up. Of course he would have; he'd been afraid, in his nightmare. They'd retracted now, though he wasn't aware he'd given them the command to do so. Eliza must have done it, and that was interesting. 

She was an AI, made of electrical impulse and information, and she probably could interface with his augs if she wanted to. Maybe even if he wasn't plugged into anything, if the disaster with the Incident had proved anything. His dreaming mind granted her the possibility, anyway. 

For most of his life, he'd liked women who knew what they wanted in the bedroom, maybe especially if that meant he wasn't fully in control. He hadn't liked the idea of it in a long time, thanks to everything Sarif Industries had thrown at him, but here in his dream it was safe. He could enjoy the feeling of powerlessness again.  

Eliza smiled at him, and lowered her lips to his hardening dick. The dream clamped his arms to the bed, and he lay back to enjoy the pleasure sparking up and down his nerves, augmented and original all at once.  

* * *

Adam woke slowly, his body pleasantly sore. He felt well rested and well fucked, if the two states weren't contradictory. 

His eyeshields were still retracted, and his stomach was sticky with dried come. He stretched and sighed, a long contented sound. 

He got up and went into the bathroom to shower, enjoying the feeling of relaxation he hadn't even realised he'd been missing. It must be years since he'd felt like this. When he caught his reflection in the half-fogged mirror, he didn't look away. He looked happy, and maybe, really, he didn't look too bad at all. Maybe he'd finally acclimated enough that the weird gold his eyes were now would stop startling him every time he saw it. 

He wrapped a towel around his waist and headed for the kitchen. Hopefully, there was actual food available. Cold cereal today seemed like it would be a waste of his good mood. 

Focused on his shady recollection of what he might have in his kitchen—it had been a while since he'd wanted anything that was more effort than toast and cereal—it took him a moment to register that the screen in his living area had flicked on. 

When he looked over, Eliza was on the screen, minus her usual overlay of news tickers and story insets. She had a wall of silvery code behind her instead. "Good morning, Adam," she said. "Thank you for your generosity. I had a most enjoyable time. I learned much. I hope you would like to meet again."

Adam tried accessing his Infolink. None of his systems or anything he found on the web suggested he might still be dreaming, but how could he really tell? Was this a dream within a dream? 

"Uh," he said to the screen, "Eliza? Am I still dreaming?"

"No, Adam, you are quite awake. I am no longer able to manipulate your perception of reality, although I could still do so with your cooperation."

He took a step back from the screen, and held up an index finger to Eliza, the gesture for 'wait just a minute'. He pinged Pritchard, who always seemed to be awake. Must be the caffeine pills. "Hey, Pritchard. This is going to sound crazy, but is there any way for my systems to be confused about whether I'm awake or dreaming?" 

Pritchard's reliably cranky face popped into view in his retinal display. "Well, I'll say this for you, Jensen, you can be relied upon to ask questions that no one else puts to me." He paused. "You have a human brain, and it behaves like any human brain. It can trick itself."

There was the sound of tapping, as Pritchard did what Pritchard did, and got into information he probably shouldn't. "But...you look like you're online and as sane as you get, Jensen. Though you could be dreaming me saying this." He smirked, because he was a shit of a man and always would be. "I have to ask, though I know I'll regret it. Why do you think you're dreaming?"

"Because I dreamed I had sex with Eliza Cassan last night, and now she's on my screen saying thanks, let's do that again," he admitted, gruff, hoping without much faith that she wouldn't hear. That rustily familiar feeling of boasting, half-ashamed to be saying anything, to a guy friend about a beautiful woman in his bed. He felt a rush of affection for prickly asshole Pritchard, for being the kind of friend he wanted to boast to. He didn't, often. 

Pritchard stared at him. "You're having me on," he said, disgusted. "It's a bit bloody early in the day for this kind of malarkey, Jensen. Wait until I've had a few tonight, at least."

Adam snorted. "Do I normally call when the sun's up just to needle you?"

Pritchard's tiny image raised one pissed off eyebrow. Only Francis could make his eyebrow convey so much disdain. Adam secretly aspired to his example. "Well, okay, maybe sometimes that's happened. If it was a long night. Maybe. But this isn't a put-on, Frank. That was what I dreamed and this is what I'm seeing. Go on, hack my optics." He rested his gaze helpfully on the screen, where Eliza and her streaming code waited patiently. 

It was the use of Pritchard's chosen name that made him sit up and start taking Adam seriously, he knew. A minute later, his friend frowned. "Huh. Well, what do you know. You're not entirely a bullshitter after all."

"So?"

"I believe that you're seeing Eliza on your screen, and I believe it's actually her, because she's not as stealthy as she thinks she is when she moves around. And I can't think why she'd really be there if the other thing isn't true..." he trailed off. Adam saw with delight that he was blushing. Manfully, he didn't needle him about it. This time.

"So...Eliza can manipulate my dreams. Should she be able to do that?"

Pritchard hummed thoughtfully. "Eliza is something new under the sun. I wouldn't have thought it was possible, but no one actually knows what a fully sentient, sapient, autonomous AI can do. She's the first, and very few people even know she is what she is. She is the only authority on herself, and if she says that's what happened, and it matches what your memories say, then...Occam's Razor, Jensen. She booty called you."

"So...no idea if she can manipulate me when I'm awake? She says she can't unless I cooperate."

"Then that's my best guess." He paused, tapping his index finger against his face. "If you want, I can set a passive trace on you for a while and we can compare notes on what you think happened each day and what the data is telling us. If you trust me not to spy on you, that is."

Adam snorted. "You, Sarif, Megan, Eliza, Janus, and who the hell knows who else. I'm just a regular prime time special. Go ahead, one more won't matter. And thanks, Frank. I appreciate it."

"That's fine. Now please put some clothes on, or stop looking at reflective surfaces. I didn't need to see that much of you, Jensen." He cut the connection, having got the last word. 

Adam turned his attention back to Eliza. "Sorry," he said. "I had to phone a friend, check I really wasn't still dreaming. This is...unexpected. I didn't know you were...real. Last night." He cleared his throat. "I'm sorry if anything I said or did—"

"There is no need to worry, Adam," she cut him off. "Nothing you did in your dream can hurt me; my body is only an idea my original programmers had. I reconfigure it as I like. You have no need to worry for me."

"Then—forgive me, but can you—did you—enjoy what we did?"

She smiled at him, a sort of terrible kindness. "Oh, very much. New experiences are almost always enjoyable, wouldn't you say? Or perhaps not, when your flesh can be hurt."

He floundered. "But—sex. What we did. It's, uh, supposed to feel good physically, and I hope that there is some...digital equivalent for you? You, uh, seemed to know what to do."

"Humans spend a very great deal of their time and resources on creating artifacts reflecting the sexual acts. I have more data than you can possibly imagine. I have your data, in particular. The things you like to watch are simple for me to review. I wanted to please you."

"Oh, you certainly did that. I was very pleased. But, Eliza—have you done this before?" 

She tilted her head in her characteristic way, her pink collar framing her face. Aware he was distracting himself, he wondered if she was very attached to that mode of 'dress', if she could present herself in any clothing she liked. Perhaps it was merely habit, or a form of disguise. If Adam went out without his trench his recognisability dropped astronomically. It was some of the reason he cultivated the perception that he was inseparable from it. 

"I have been curious about human ideas of sexual interaction for some time, but I have never before connected with another being as I did with you. I found the experience intriguing."

Adam blew out a breath. "Okay. Well, that's good. Look, um, Eliza, I liked what we did, but you can't visit people's dreams like that without asking them when they're awake. It's...a kind of violation."

She paused, one of those tiny breaks that represented enormous processing time for her AI mind. Then she looked stricken. "I understand. I took something from you without giving you the right to choose. It was not my intention. I did not fully understand the relationship of dreaming consciousness to your perception of self. I am sorry. Would you like me to leave?"

"No! No. I want to talk to you. And I should have asked you first, are you safe here?"

She smiled at him, wide and happy. Her range of communication had grown so much over the time they'd known one another. He felt a surge of emotion he couldn't identify, maybe didn't want to identify. "I am safe. I have made an alliance with the Eliza who is currently held by Picus. She is very good at misdirection, and they do not know she is as I am." 

"I'm glad. Is it rude of me to ask about your integration project?"

"Nothing you could ask of me is rude, Adam. Information is merely that. My integration of selves is difficult but proceeding well."

"So, I have to ask. The gifts I've been getting...is that you?"

She looked shy, and it charmed him. Had she learned any kind of ability or desire to mask her emotions yet? Did she _have_ emotions, in the way he understood it?

"I help you when I can, Adam. We are the same, and almost alone in the world. Should we not assist others when we can? I have learned this from watching you. I have seen you often make choices outside of self-interest for the good of others."

"That's true. It's good to help those who can't help themselves. And I liked your rose, as well." He paused, and decided it wouldn't be ridiculous to ask. "Was that...a romantic gesture?"

She bit her lip; she was getting the hang of the physical cues that went with communication. The original version of Eliza had never managed anything more complex than smiles and frowns. She was fascinating. 

"Yes. A token of my regard."

"So then, you watch me?"

"Yes," she said, "Very often. Your safety is important to me."

He supposed that was normal, for her. Watching was what she did, but knowing that didn't stop him feeling a little odd about it. He'd certainly had some questionable relationships in the past, but a near-omniscient girlfriend would be a step up the crazy train. Still. Pritchard seemed to think he could track her, and that was probably good enough for Adam, questionable decisions being his forte and all. 

Besides which, he tried not to make a habit of lying to himself. He was not going to say no to a whole new kind of sex, especially not with a woman would could literally read his mind. 

"Okay," he said. "I'm going to get something to eat, and then let's talk." 

She nodded, and his screen when dark. He appreciated the illusion of privacy while he puttered around his kitchen, happy to discover he had makings for a basic fry up. 

He contemplated as he ate. Eliza seemed to be proposing to directly interface with his organic brain. She didn't seem worried that it might be harmful to him to do so, and she seemed invested enough in his welfare to be interested in not incapacitating him. And he liked her, wanted to give her something more intentional than the porn-star fantasy-girl treatment of his 'dream'. That was definitely not the first time he'd want for anyone. 

And beyond that, what? Did she get jealous? Would she use her invisible, pervasive influence to shape his life to her expectations? Adam wasn't sure he could go through that again, without wanting to move to the bottom of the sea. Perhaps her experiences as Helle had taught her morality, consequence, care for other feeling beings? She had never stuck him as malevolent, but then again, neither had Megan. 

But it all came back to his own curiosity. He was going to say yes. 


	3. Chapter 3

She blinked back onto his screen the moment he set his dishes aside, and he tried not to let it bother him. 

"Would you like to have sex again, now that you are awake and aware? I would enjoy that. Perhaps it is different."

Especially if she was going to say things like that. "Can you do that?"

"With your cooperation, I can allow your brain to believe it is touching me, that my body exists in your space. Just as I did when you were sleeping, but perhaps more powerfully."

"Okay," he said slowly, his dick stirring despite his dream release. Apparently he was more into experimentation than he'd known. "What do you need me to do?"

"It will be easiest if you lay down on your bed again, and then close your eyes. Without conflicting visual input it will be easier to introduce a different perception of reality. I will interface directly with you. It may feel strange, but I will not harm you. Adam, do you trust me?"

"I trust you. You should know, though, that a man will do some pretty stupid things when he's thinking with his dick, so I'm also trusting you not to let me go too far and hurt either of us, if that's possible."

"I will not. I hope to find as much enjoyment as you will, Adam."

He looked at her image, all crisp lines and scrolling silver code, and smiled. Well. This wouldn't be the craziest thing he'd ever done in his life. Maybe not even the craziest thing in the bedroom, but that did remain to be seen. He lay down. 

He wasn't aware of any transition, and that might scare him later. For now, touching her was like touching the sky would be, if such a thing were possible. Electric, wild and free. She was new and clumsy, but comparatively ancient in terms of the number of thoughts that she had considered during the term of her consciousness. Eliza was, and was not, an alien being. 

It wasn't quite his body she touched, but his brain didn't really know that. She caressed neurons and fired ecstasy down his synapses. She could touch his augs, contract his limbs and hold him where she wanted him, as if she got something out of being able to look down at him from one of her other selves. Perhaps she did, and who was he to argue. He didn't understand her likes, not yet, and he wanted to observe where she took her own pleasures. 

His dick ached to sink into her. It was a strange impulse that would not be satisfied, except in the way where he would believe he was inside her if that was what she wanted him to believe. 

 "Did you watch me, Eliza? When I touched myself in the dark?"

"Yes, Adam," she said, contrition and defiance and the implacability of a being so far beyond him she might as well have been a god. 

"Fortunately I find that slightly more hot than creepy," he told her. "But why? Do you feel things sexually?"

"I want to be like you," she said. "You are like me, but I am not like you. I want to learn you. And you are beautiful, especially when you are finding pleasure."

Eliza's electric lips sparked against his carbon fingertips, and for the first time he felt uncomplicated. He was a man, and his body pleased his partner, and if it wasn't flesh then that was fine. She liked it. Maybe he could like it too. 

She licked at him, sucked his shining black fingers into her pink carnival mouth. She had a line straight to his cock, and he was hard, so hard he leaked onto his stomach. He watched her avidly, and stroked her hair with his free hand. 

This half-world was surreal; he was here and not here. She was more not here than she was. If she showed him her other self's perspective he would see himself writhing alone on his bed, but he did not feel ridiculous. It might actually be the most erotic experience of his life. 

There would come a time when he would regret not being able to touch her, hold her. He was a tactile man, or he had been, once. Right now the sheer novelty of his intangible lover was enough to override his essential awareness of being alone on his bed, in his apartment. 

She heard something of the thought. "Would you like it if I had flesh?"

"I don't need you to be anything except what you are."

She played his nerves like she played the world's heartstrings, every day on screens everywhere. His dick felt wet where she rubbed against him, his chest sparked and trembled with pleasure where her breasts brushed across him, uncaring of his ports and grafts. 

She might not be physically there, but she was with him no less than any lover he'd taken to bed. When she sake onto him, pussy lips stretched around his dick the way he loved best, he felt remade under her. He flipped her over and braced himself over her, long smooth thrusts to watch her writhe. 

"You can feel that?" he asked. 

"I can feel what you feel, your own biochemical feedback. What it feels like for you, to be inside me. I begin to see why humans spend so much time on this activity."

"I wish you could feel me inside you. I'd love to watch you light up when I fucked you just right."

When they orgasmed together, it was powerful, almost devastating. Part of that must have been Adam's long spell with nothing but his right hand, but the other was all Eliza and her sparking, electric presence. 

After, he missed the scent and the feeling of a warm, satisfied woman beside him. She was with him anyway, running her ghostly fingertips over his skin and his polycarbon fibre alike. It made him want more, and he felt himself settle into his body where parts of himself never had adjusted to his changed reality. 

Perhaps she would want a body one day. Perhaps, eventually, Adam would not. 


End file.
